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Sosban & The Old Butcher's Restaurant

About this rating

Restaurants are awarded from 1 to 5 Rosettes for culinary excellence. One Rosette restaurants are highly recommended in a local area and five Rosettes have reached the pinnacle of culinary excellence at a world class level.

Time can’t pass fast enough from the moment the booking is secured to when you actually cross the threshold, for dining at Sosban is to be anticipated, dining at Sosban is a hot ticket, dining at Sosban is not your everyday restaurant experience. There is only enough room for 16 souls at any one time and it only happens three evenings and one lunch a week. But once you’re inside you don’t have to do much but give yourself over to the prodigiously talented Stephen Stevens, who will serve up his no-choice menu at a fixed time. We’re all in this together. Allow four hours from start to finish. The one-time butcher’s shop on the high street has a rustic simplicity reflecting its former life (think natural wood, natural slate), and it perfectly suits the modern mood. The procession of dishes displays amazing creativity, compelling visuals, and mightily impressive flavours. Caribou moss is a stellar opening mouthful, rich with anchovy and malty flavours, and be prepared to use your fingers to pick up a divine lamb’s cheek with pork crackling and dip it into the accompanying laverbread mayo. Next up, crisp cod skin with smoked roe and foraged leaves, and then a stunning cod number, with yeast purée, onion rings, crispy potato and ground heart. Rhubarb and custard gets a reappraisal when a crisp rhubarb sphere is filled with duck egg custard and hits of rhubarb from poached and freeze-dried fruit. The only decision to make is which of the well-chosen wines to go for alongside the complex, creative cuisine, and, of course, when you’re able to return.